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I’m not going to sugarcoat this: the afterlife is deathly dull. After about fifteen minutes, if you have any amount of brains at all, you will be so bloody bored that you will wish you could light yourself on fire just to put an end to the monotony. Of course, this is strictly forbidden. Besides, you are already dead after all, so there is really no point. So could I really be blamed for spending so much of my time at the The Void Internet Cafe?
Strictly speaking, there is no “Internet” in Hel. You can, however, access any information you like about your previous existence at The Void. Some mindless Midgardian thought he was being clever when he started calling it that a couple years ago, so the name stuck. I suppose it’s better than referring to it as what it truly is: a place where you can endlessly torture yourself about the terrible sins you committed while you were still alive. That is, unless you’re me.
I have to admit, I did some reprehensible things during my life. Sending the Destroyer to Midgard? An ill-advised overreaction, I own. The Battle of New York? Not my finest hour. Faking my death to usurp my father’s throne? Well, you get the idea. Do I really need to go on? But while I definitely made my share of...shall we say....”questionable moral decisions,” I can never quite bring myself to regret them completely. The way I see it, the choices we make are not what define us, but rather what we learn from them. Even the coldest of hearts will admit that I’ve come a long way since I sneaked that army of Frost Giants into my brother’s coronation party. I might have, dare I say it, even redeemed myself by my final heroic act of facing my death on the Statesman instead of running away as is my general custom. But would the second event truly have happened without the first? Who knows? And that is why I feel that bemoaning one’s past mistakes is a tremendous waste of time. Now, as ever, I adamantly refuse to apologise for being unswervingly true to my capricious nature. To wit, I do what I want.
Despite my last ditch attempts at virtue, I still managed to miss Valhalla and woke up in Hel instead. Alas, the powers that be obviously don’t appreciate a deathbed conversion. Which is why after months of painstaking effort on my part, I was pleased to finally be able to perform a small act of rebellion. I have discovered that I can manipulate the system even down here. I have managed to rig my so-called “reflection room” at the Void so that it is not merely capable of showing an endless loop of my life’s blunders but can also display other scenes related to me. And here’s the best part, most of them never really happened.
It turns out that somewhere in the multiverse, a ridiculous group of humans invented what they call “fanfiction.” Somehow, through all my mental manipulations, I have managed to tune into an infinite feed of stories that have been written about me by the inhabitants of Midgard. For some odd reason, they seem to think I am a mythological character that never actually existed. I suppose that’s simply how they justify throwing me into some of the most bizarre situations one can imagine. For example, there is a trope known as mpreg, where I, as a male become pregnant. This is, of course, utter nonsense. I always shapeshift into female form when I wish to beget children. It’s so much easier that way. Why should I not? But it’s still enormously amusing to read about.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one bored out of my mind. Recently, another tall, skinny humanoid lifeform has been spending an inordinate amount of time at The Void. Of course, he isn’t quite as tall as I am, but I suppose the Midgardians would still consider him fairly handsome. He does have amazing hair, I’ll give him that. No matter what I try to do with mine, it always ends up greasy and unkempt, even in the afterlife. It’s really rather irritating. Anyway, I’ve noticed this particular gentleman lurking in one of the nearby “reflection rooms” lately, with this look of utter anguish on his face. He must still be reviewing his past indiscretions. Several times, I felt an annoying prick of conscience urge me to share the secrets of fanfiction with him, but my selfish streak won out in the end. Until today.
I was in the middle of a particularly delightful crackfic where I was rooming with my doppelganger, an incredibly attractive fellow, but a bit naive and too sweet for his own good, when the stranger entered.
“What in the Shadow Proclamation are you doing?” he asked, pulling at his long spiky hair.
“This room is occupied,” I informed him bluntly. “Try another.”
“You’re a bit rude, do you know that?” he asked coming up beside me.
I rolled my eyes. “Pot, meet kettle.”
He grinned. “That is the sort of man I am, yes. Or was, I suppose. Thanks for noticing. But still not ginger.”
“Don’t look here,” I replied with a shrug. “Although, this Tom Hiddleston character is basically me as a ginger so there’s that.”
“Tom who?” he asked, peering over my shoulder.
I sighed. There was no being rid of him now. “He’s this cinnamon roll Midgardian that they’ve paired with me. We’ve got a serious BROTP going on in this fic.”
He blinked his warm brown eyes at me. “Come again?”
I explained to him all about fanfiction and the various tropes that I had discovered over the past several weeks. Well, the ones I could explain anyway. Some of them were beyond the comprehension of even my astounding intellect.
“So what you’re telling me is that you can basically change the channel of your reflection room so that it displays these stories instead of your regrets?”
“That’s the general idea.”
He flashed his toothy smile at me again. “Oh, that’s brilliant. Let me try!” He reached into his pocket.
I flinched reflexively as he pulled out a long metallic object with a glowing blue light on the end. “I had one of those once,” I sighed wistfully. “But mine was bigger.”
He frowned at me. “A sonic device larger than this might compromise the atomic structure of an entire building.”
“Alright, alright,” I admitted. “Mine was a scepter if you want to get technical about it.”
“A scepter?” One of his meticulously groomed eyebrows shot up. “Were you a king or something?”
“A god.” I looked down my nose at him, using our slight height difference to my advantage.
“Not impressed,” he replied, beginning to fiddle with his sonic device. “I’ve defeated gods before.”
I bristled at his nonchalance. “And what made so you so damn important in life?”
His eyes burned with excitement as though he had been waiting for this very question. “I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord from the planet of Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous.”
“A lord and a god,” I mused. “What a pretty pair we make.”
“God of what exactly?” The Time Lord still seemed incredulous.
It was my turn to grin. “Mischief.”
He laughed in appreciation. “Now that I believe. Well met, Loki Odinson.”
“You’ve heard of me then?”
“Of course.” He aimed his metal rod at the screen on the wall. A brief whirring noise was heard, and a new story appeared. “Every Time Lord knows of the bringer of Ragnarok. Yours is a cautionary tale that teaches the true meaning of what a fixed point in history is.”
I suddenly felt utterly defeated. “So, there truly was nothing I could do to avert Asgard’s doom.”
There was a look of sympathy and complete understanding in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He paused for a moment as the words on the screen came into clearer focus. “If it makes you feel any better, I was forced to destroy my home planet as well. Some days, there are just no good options to choose from, I’m afraid.”
I blinked back the unwelcome moisture that had begun to cloud my vision and tried to concentrate on the new story. “All the Wrong Questions,” I read.
As I began to scroll through the fic, which was written in an odd screenplay format, the Doctor suddenly shouted, “Wait, wait, wait.” He read several lines before exclaiming, “This is another story about you!”
“You’re in it, too,” I protested. “And what do you expect? This is my reflection room.”
He began to readjust his sonic tool. “I suppose I’ll just have to find my own room then.”
“Good luck with that.”
He was about to leave when he suddenly blurted out, “Are you happy in any of these stories?”
I thought for a moment. “Well, definitely not in the whump fics. Avoid those like the plague, my friend. But in some of the others...I suppose I’m not completely miserable.”
He nodded. “The ones where you’re with Sigyn, I suppose.”
I squinted my eyes in confusion. “Who?”
The Doctor’s jaw dropped. “In your universe, there’s no Sigyn?”
“Who is Sigyn?” I asked again in irritation.
The Doctor gave his screwdriver a final twist and aimed it at the screen again. A new story appeared, this one featuring the aforementioned Sigyn. “Your soulmate,” he said quietly before slowly backing out of the room.
I turned toward the monitor with a mixture of dread and anticipation in my stomach. Soulmates was a trope I could understand. I had read many fics which had paired me with everyone from Darcy Lewis (who?) to my brother (ew, no). In some of them, the other characters were described as my soulmate, someone I was predestined to be with by fate. But I had never come across this “Sigyn” before.”
I hadn’t read very far when I realised that Sigyn, whoever she is, was supposed to be my wife. Chills rippled across my skin at the thought. I continued to read, becoming more and more fascinated as I went along.
Hours disappeared as I became completely immersed in the story. When I finally reached the end, I felt as though I had just been doused with a bucket of cold water. Why had I never met this loving and faithful woman while I was still alive? What cruel gods had conspired to separate me from the love of my immortal life? Whoever they were, I vowed I would make them pay.
I jumped in alarm when a voice came from behind me. “I ship it.” I turned to see The Doctor nodding toward the screen.
I swallowed around the huge lump in my throat that had been forming since he had first spoken her name. “I think I do, too,” I whispered hoarsely.
“Good on you, mate,” he replied clapping me on the shoulder. “Ship it with all your heart. Ship it like FedEx. Maybe you’ll actually get to meet her in your next life.”
A small spark of hope flared to life in my undead chest. “I get one of those?”
“Weeeellll, you’re a god aren’t you?” The Doctor’s eyebrows lifted hopefully.
He’s right. And who knows? Maybe I’ll actually get a second chance. All I know for certain is that for the first time since my arrival in Hel, I actually feel alive.